A high-pressure Raman and X-ray diffraction study of the perovskite SrCeO3

A high-pressure structural study of SrCeO₃ has been performed at room temperature by Raman spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction up to 32 and 45 GPa, respectively. A first-order reversible phase transition is observed at about 12 GPa in both techniques. A second weak structural change, taking place between 18 and 25 GPa, can be suspected from Raman data. The increase in the number of Raman bands and diffraction lines is an indication that the symmetry is lowered and the compound does not evolve towards the ideal cubic perovskite structure. A Rietveld analysis of X-ray data was performed for the low-pressure phase and the atomic positions and the cell lattice parameters variations are reported in this paper. The volume compressibility derived from Raman modes (5.6×10⁻¹² Pa⁻¹), involving mainly bond-stretching for each type of polyhedron, is found to be close to the one obtained from volume cell variations measured by X-ray diffraction (7.9×10⁻¹² Pa⁻¹).